32:35.739N 073:48.113W

We left our lovely dock in Whittaker Creek, Oriental at 1020 on Wednesday 28^th.  By left, I mean took a deep breath, started the engine, leant Brad and Carol onto the jetty pilings ready to push hard and then wiggled, pushed, wiggled, pushed, wiggled and pushed while we ever so slowly slid sideways through the mud and into some sort of a channel. 

Just to rewind.  We had arrived in a strong north wind which blew water into the creek and therefore increased the depth.  The wind had changed so when we came to leave the water was 2ft lower.  Tashi Delek had been sitting gently on the bottom for a couple of days.  The north wind blew again but not enough to really float us for any length of time.  We knew from Chris Parker who provides a superb individual weather forecast and routing advice that Wednesday was the best day to leave to catch the weather we hoped for out at sea.  Hence the shoving and pushing to get us the necessary metre or so away from the dock.

We crept along the channel and then stopped.  Aground once more.  Wriggle wriggle, forwards, backwards, nothing.  Mike called Shannon, a lovely girl who runs the office in the boatyard opposite who we had got to know over a couple of excellent pizzas.  Just as she was telling us that the Towboat US guy wasn’t around we got off.  Phew.  Out of the creek and into the channel and … back onto the mud.  Wriggle wriggle, forwards, backwards…. And we’re off.  And our depth gauge started to read something other than blank or zero.   We were properly on our way so last call to Shannon with our thanks and we increased our speed towards Beaufort, and the Atlantic.

On our way we hailed another of the Magellan net boats that we knew was in a boatyard for engine repairs.  We chatted on the VHF radio and we have now ‘met’ Steph and Stu by also waving from Tashi Delek as we passed.  Hopefully their engine parts will arrive without too many delays and we will see more of them somewhere south.

We made excellent progress and things seemed under control (note ‘seemed’, one can never be entirely sure) so we decided against anchoring for the night and simply to head out to sea. 

The channel was considerably easier to navigate in daylight and calm conditions compared to our arrival in May with Ros and Lauren which had been at midnight with a lot of wind and rain affecting visibility.

It wasn’t long before we reached the edges of the Gulf Stream which meant a turbulent ride and a challenge to our seasickness remedies because we have not really got our sea-legs back yet.  Brad seems to never get seasick but it was pretty nasty for Carol and Mike.  Having three of us to cover the watches makes a huge difference though because 3 hours on and six off means less disrupted sleep than 3 on 3 off.  Conditions apart, the first night is never great while we get into the routine of getting up and going to sleep several times.

Today is Friday and we have been motoring for about 36 hours with very little wind.  On the advice of Chris Parker when we spoke to him on the long range radio this morning we have changed course slightly and are now heading due east to meet up with some wind around sunset at which point we will start heading more south.  It still seems weird that the quickest way is so rarely the shortest way on a boat.  For those interested Google ‘Chris Parker marine weather centre’  he has an excellent website.  While we were on the jetty and had wifi we logged into his webcast each morning so we could listen to him on the radio and look at the charts and forecasts he was using at the same time.

The best news is that it is definitely getting warmer so we are shedding layers of clothing and taking blankets of the bed. 

At some point we are hoping for light winds so that we can use the “new” cruising chute (asymmetric spinnaker) that we bought second hand in Oriental. 

Brad has a track record of catching fish so we have given him that job in the hope that it will help to change our luck.  The Sushi kit is still in the bilges though, I don’t want to tempt fate by getting it out yet again only to have to put it away unused.

All for now while we look for this wind….